hopscotch

Here we are. Nine months of 2026 already gone by, amid politically-charged atmosphere. Along come a book, which opens in Spring 2016, but covers a canvas from Winter 2014 and then subsequent seasons in 2015, 2016 to conclude in 2017.  How to Date a Fanatic by Aruni Kashyap perfects the outsider -looking-inwards gaze.  Published almost a decade later (chronologically), when most of the events mentioned in the book actually took place, it gives the readers a chance to assess, ascertain if something has changed at all. Or more appropriately it intends to bring us face to face with a period, where it all began. The uncertainty, the fear, of belonging, being named and identified.  Kashyap, an academician, has chosen to set How to Date a Fanatic, amongst the university campuses in Delhi. Not just because they were actual sites of the political developments, but they are the spaces which discuss, debate on affirmative action, development, economic benefits, marginalisation,...